


Jaded to the Blood

by ungrateful_sinner



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Mentioned death of grubs, Post-Sgrub, a fansession though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 04:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11707029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungrateful_sinner/pseuds/ungrateful_sinner
Summary: It's hard, being a jadeblood in a universe without a mothergrub.  It's hard, and nobody understands.





	Jaded to the Blood

Two sweeps.

They had been out of the game for two sweeps, and he still hadn’t had any success with this fucking machine. He was a jadeblood - he was SUPPOSED to be able to “assist in the conception of the young”. Why couldn’t he do this?!

Well, he COULD do this. Just not correctly. At first, he had thought about making a Matriorb. But that required genetic material, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to go around asking his former co-players for that. He still had SOME dignity. Perhaps once he managed to recreate his race.

But that was proving near impossible. The ectobiology lab he had (somehow) alchemized was not configured, so he had to do it himself. And creating gene sequences for healthy offspring was incredibly difficult. So many grubs had been created just to die within seconds. So many eggs had never hatched. He had long since stopped shedding tears for each failure, instead quietly burying them beneath the earth to be used as nutrients for the flowers he grew. It felt wrong to leave them for the wildlife.

And now here he sat, watching yet another egg that would never hatch. He had lost track of how many he had lost - if he were being completely honest, he did not want to know. It had to have been well into the hundreds - no, the thousands. He had spent two sweeps doing this. Isolated himself from the others to fulfil his role. But he was a fucking failure. Tears threatened to spill out, but he refused to let them fall. He had sworn not to cry over this anymore.

Why did he still do this? He had given up hope long perigees ago. So why not give up? It was just repetition at this point. Make the eggs, watch them as they rot. It was some form of sick torture, a reminder that he could not achieve his purpose. He may be a sylph, but he could only do so much, and did the egg just move?

He wanted to believe it. But... surely his eyes were playing tricks on him. And then it shook again, and again, and oh god it was hatching. Cracks appeared over the surface. A nubby horn broke through, and then a tiny head of white hair. That was the wrong color. This thing was a mutant - but more importantly, it was ALIVE. The grub finally made it out of the egg. It was small, despite being a purpleblood. He picked up the hatchling, looking it over. It seemed to be healthy. Yes, he swore that he wouldn’t cry over a grub, but this was different. It lived. He succeeded.

“Hey there, little guy,” he whispered through tears, a smile forming on his face. “I’m Mercie.” Shit, the grub would need a name, wouldn’t it? Normally they weren’t named until they proved their worth in the trials, but this grub had proved its worth just by hatching. “I’m gonna call you Caedus. A good name for a good grub, right?” The newly named Caedus chirped, and Mercie moved it to hold it against his chest on its back. He subconsciously began to rock back and forth.

“Welcome to the world, Caedus.”


End file.
